Homeward Bound

Chapter Thirty-Two

It was one of the biggest explosions since the world had suffered the megachill of January 2001.

The spark of the 5.56 mm bullet was enough to ignite the massive store of gasoline in the small stone building. The strength of the walls compounded the horror, containing the force of the explosion for a vital fraction of a second, giving it the chance to build to a dreadful proportion.

Ryan flattened his face against the steep bank of the Sorrow, eye closed, hands over his ears, mouth open, taking the classic precautions against an intense blast. Despite everything, he wasn't prepared for the huge concussion as the store exploded. He was nearly plucked from his perch and dashed into the murderous current of the wide river. Krysty was lower down, as was Jak and J.B., and they were better protected.

None of them witnessed the result of their plan. They didn't need to see it to know that it had worked.

Worked better than any expectation.

For Baron Harvey, it was like witnessing the hammer of the gods.

His pretty cap with its nodding feather was whisked from his head and disappeared forever in the maelstrom of torn air. Heat seared his face, scorching the straggling hair, blistering his scalp. A giant's fist punched at the baron, striving to knock him from his saddle. But like his enemies he was protected by the bank of earth. Dirt and pebbles scoured at him, tearing the elegant robe across his shoulders. The horse whinnied its terror and whirled about. Fortunately it didn't rear, for the screaming shards of masonry would have ripped its lord and master to tatters of flesh. With Harvey hanging over its neck, his fingers tangled in its flowing mane, the huge horse began to gallop back along the narrow trail toward the ville.

The sergeant had had his mouth open, ready to bellow his warning. He heard the pinging sound of the bullet hitting the door behind him and out of the corner of his eye he noticed the trail of sparks from the contact. But his brain didn't have time to make the connection, and he died ignorant of his own chilling. The ignition of the gasoline fumes and then the spilled liquid took a lightning moment. And a quarter heartbeat later the opened drums went up, taking everything and everybody with it.

The sec officer's skull literally exploded, the fumes gushing into his mouth, tearing apart his sinuses, flaming through eyes, ears and nose. His brain boiled instantly, and the bones of his head simply disintegrated under the force.

All but a half-dozen men and a couple of the dogs died instantly.

And they were blinded, naked, hideously burned, their bodies thrown forty yards away in every direction.

Ryan, clinging to the living rock for his own life, felt the shock wave pass over him like the beating of the wings of the angel of doom, the heat taking his breath for a moment. The noise drowned out the roaring of the Sorrow, deafening him. The thunder rolled on, diminishing, and then things began to fall around them.

A few large chunks of stone dropped to the ground — edges charred and blackened by the explosion — and several of the twisted drums that had held the gasoline. Ryan looked up, seeing the sky was filled, blotting out the sun. He pointed upward, trying to warn the other three, then shielded his head as best he could. Fortunately the force of the blast carried most of the heavier chunks of granite and metal toward the north loop of the Sorrow.

But smaller lumps of stone, some the size of a baseball, began to thud on the turf and patter in the river. One big as a hen's egg hit Ryan on the left shoulder, bringing a sharp dart of pain.

A piece of gray metal he recognized as an old flash suppressor from an M-16 landed in the mud of the bank near his left hand. A jagged butt stock off another blaster dug out a gouge in the grass a yard in front of him.

Then came the meat.

You could hardly describe it as being any functioning part of human bodies, or animal. They fell all over them, covering them in a slick coating of sticky crimson dew, with globs of flesh and glittering white bone. Strings of tendon and fragments of dark blue cloth floated in the gentle breeze like falling leaves. An eye bounced just to the left of Jak, but it wasn't possible to tell if it was human or canine. A right hand, missing the thumb, hit Krysty on the back of her thigh, lying there like a bleeding hairless spider. A whole leg, still attached to part of the hip, thudded heavily into the bank by J.B.'s feet, slithering the last few inches and being instantly whirled away by the scything current of the Sorrow.

Eventually even the bloody mist ceased and a momentary quiet descended. Then a dog began to howl, thin and high like a woman in childbirth. Ryan, ears ringing, squinted over the lip of the bank, wiping blood from his face. He saw the animal, smashed against the trunk of one of the tall trees, one of the trees that had been tall seconds earlier. Now the top fifty feet were gone, torn away, the branches shredded and white from the impact of the gas explosion. The dog, hardly recognizable, was a broken husk of the proud hunting animal that had padded out of the ville. It was blind and broken and close to death. The howling quickly stopped.

Only one of the sec men was still conscious. He had been at the back of the press, saved from instant slaughter by the bodies of his fellows. Now Ryan could see him lying, like a discarded puppet, thrown into the smoldering undergrowth near the trail.

"That's it," Ryan said, standing up. He tried to brush himself clean, but found that his hands were covered in blood.

Krysty climbed the steep bank, dusting off her clothes. "Gaia! The smell of gas!" she exclaimed. "The world's filled with it."

J.B. was next up. He'd taken the precaution of tucking his fedora into the front of his jerkin, and he pulled it out and beat it on his knee, placing it carefully back on his head. "Worked well," he said. "Where's your brother?"

Jak answered him. The boy wore only a thin shirt, having sacrificed his own jacket to help fool the sec men. "Seen fat Harvey. On horse there." He pointed toward the high earth bank, near where the dying man lay and moaned to himself. "Gone now. Hill would protect him an' horse."

Ryan nodded. He, too, had seen his brother's grotesque hat bobbing above the top of the slope just before he'd squeezed the trigger on the M-16. "Probably halfway back to the ville by now."

"Where we should be," the Armorer said, looking down at his hands and clothes. "Be good to wash up some on the way.''

Ryan looked around the stinking shambles. The land was littered with pieces of stone and fragments of twisted metal. And the bushes and torn trees around were draped with what looked like the contents of several butchers' stores, draggled and dripping.

In all his years with the Trader, which had encompassed much chilling, Ryan had never seen such a totally appalling slaughterhouse.

Jak wandered around, picking his way between the puddles of watery mud and blood. He called out that one or two of the sec men still retained a kind of life. But only the man flung against the bushes was still conscious.

"Lost arm an' leg!" Jak shouted. "One eye gone. Other leg broke an' bits o'bone showing."

Ryan joined the boy and looked down at the remnants of his brother's soldier. The moaning was low, bubbling through the crimson froth that dribbled from the slack jaws.

"Mum, Mum, want... to bed. Stop, Mum..."

Ryan gently inserted the tip of the M-16's muzzle between the jagged, chipped teeth. The man closed his lips on it like a babe at the bottle, the moaning stopping. Ryan squeezed the trigger once, feeling the gun buck against his wrist. The impact bounced the sec trooper's head hard against the earth. The leg kicked and then the body was still.

Ryan straightened. "Nothing to keep us here."

"We going back to the big house?" Krysty asked.

"That's where Doc an' Lori are." He paused. "And that's where my brother is. Come this far to settle up the account. Might as well walk the last mile to finish it."

A quarter mile away from the scene of the explosion they found a pool of pure, still water, unsullied by gas or by blood. In turn they knelt and washed away as much of the human detritus as they could. Jak rinsed out his mouth, spitting away the taste of death.

J.B. was stooped on the ground, hands cupped, the others around him, when Krysty suddenly snatched at Ryan's arm.

"Listen!"

"What?" he asked, swinging around to probe the forest with the carbine.

"Someone there." Krysty pointed into the deepest part of the undergrowth where Ryan could just make out a dark silhouette. The figure stood, watching them.

Before he could challenge the stranger, the branches of the witch hazel parted and out walked Nathan Freeman, holding his Smith & Wesson.

"The goodest of afternoons, Uncle Ryan," he said, half bowing. "Would that great explosion be something to do with you?"

The Virginian told them about Doc Tanner and Lori Quint's abortive attempt to infiltrate the ville, how it had gone wrong and how the word was they were held prisoners in the cells of the guardhouse. Nate also outlined what he had done, waiting for news of Ryan and the others. Hearing of the death hunt, he had followed the killer dogs and sec men.

"I'd decided that I'd try for the baron with this," he informed them, flourishing the blaster, "if he'd had you all chilled. Then the sky opened yonder." The young man laughed. "Heard me some chem storms over the Shens. Never nothing like that. Thought the nukes were back again. Then I glimpsed the baron, face like a madman, double-stupe, galloping toward the ville. Streaked with blood and dirt. Thought I'd come see what had been going down with you."

"They all died," Ryan said.

"What?" Nathan shook his head. "That can't be, Uncle."

"You keep calling me 'Uncle' and I'll start calling you 'Nephew.' Understand, Nate?"

"Sure, Ryan, but... all of 'em? That's nine tenths of the sec men from the ville."

"Guess that's 'bout right."

"And Harvey's driven clear-crazed. That means that anything could be happening back at Front Royal right now."

Ryan nodded his agreement. "That's right. Which is why we're heading there. Back to the ville." Under his breath, so that only Krysty heard him he added, "Homeward bound."